Tuesday, December 08, 2015

EdD - Focus

The feedback for Submission 2 was about 1000 words, but it could have been 4: You Need to Focus! Quite right, too. I haven't really got a research question. I mean, for example, "Is it fair to require new Scots to undertake language testing?" Well, ok, but it gets binary, (Yes it is. No it isn't.) And anyway, could boil down to a semantic discussion about "fairness", which has meaning in language testing, but is a shoogly peg to hang a doctorate on.

The economic aspect is interesting. It can be argued that, economically, demographically, we (Scotland) needs more people, and that means mostly people who know enough language to participate in our society and culture. But that's all assertion by me just now, I have no evidence, and I would struggle to get any because economics and demographics are not within my fields of previous knowledge.

Maybe I need a narrative or story to get me into it. Not for actual research, but to identify where the research should go. Essentially, I want to find out how it feels to be a refugee or asylum seeker in Scotland, and in particular how it feels to meet the obligation to do a high stakes language test.

SEARCH: refugee stor* narrative scotland in suprimo gave 1085 results. That reduces to 337, with full text on line, since 2005. [And at this point SUPrimo stops co-operating...] Will check the Dewey for refugees and go to library, in my own actual body.

SEARCH: refugee in library collections. 101 results. Mostly electronic resources, and I'll come back to them, [noticed a heavy bias towards children, so narrows field considerably if this is a story about adults... Which maybe brings us to the gender issue? Should I focus on men? If I'm speaking with people from, eg, Syria, speaking with women might be problematical...]

RESULTS hard copies, not children or otherwise not relevant gives [proper citations later]:

Being a refugee : learning and identity : a longitudinal study of refugess in the UK